Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [79]
He tipped his head, confused.
“You are too good for me,” she explained.
“That’s impossible.”
“No, seriously, Win. You are a good person, and I’m only pretending to be one. I’ve given you this false impression that I’m selfless and kind. And I’m not.”
Win raised his eyebrows. “God, that’s a relief. You may think I’m good, but I was starting to feel pretty intimidated.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I got eight fifty an hour to babysit Valia.” She figured she might as well go for full disclosure.
“Man, you deserved a hundred.”
She laughed. “Funny thing was, I ended up really caring about her. That part was free,” she added.
He studied her for a long moment, a quizzical look in his eyes, before he opened his mouth. “I used to be fat.”
Carmen felt her eyebrows floating upward. “Excuse me?”
“I used to be fat.” Win shrugged. “I was the fat kid. Since we’re uncovering our inner selves, I might as well throw that in.”
She couldn’t help glancing over his body in case there was a hundred pounds she had forgotten to notice. There wasn’t.
“The summer I was thirteen my parents sent me to fat camp. The next summer I grew six inches and got serious about swimming. But still, a fat kid lives inside me.”
Carmen tried to fit this piece into the puzzle of Win. It did fit, in a funny way.
He cleared his throat. “So as I see it, I’m the pretender. You’re too good for me.”
“That’s impossible,” she said.
He moved closer again. He looked in her eyes for a long time. Then he tugged, most intimately, on a belt loop of the Pants. “If you’re too good for me and I’m too good for you, what does that mean?”
“We’re just right?”
He smiled. “Can I?” He wanted to put his arms around her again.
“Please.”
In front of the candy machine, under the glare of fluorescent hallway lights, surrounded by the smell of old people, he put his lips on hers. He kissed her soft and slow at first, and then deeper.
He buried his head in her neck. He pushed her hair aside and kissed her there. She let out a small sigh.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he murmured into her ear.
“Mmmm,” she said. She found his lips again with hers. With abandon, she kissed him. Perhaps for the first time ever, she kissed without a single thought about how it was or what it was or what it meant. She kissed from the inside.
An old lady wheeled out of her room and caught them in the act. “Can you two lovebirds take that somewhere else?” she clucked.
Carmen and Win both started laughing, running for the elevators. They held hands as they descended and as they strode through the lobby.
Carmen walked, and squeezed his hand, and suddenly she had the strangest impression that Good Carmen walked before her, a few feet in front of her, like a ghost, a glistening spirit.
This was a day for miracles. Carmen overtook that spirit. She walked right into Good Carmen and absorbed her into her soul. Let her fight it out with Bad Carmen if she needed to.
And, thus, the hospital doors opened and Whole Carmen emerged, newly born, into the world.
My shoe is off My foot is cold I have a bird I like to hold.
—Dr. Seuss
Tibby wasn’t done leaping yet.
Dazed in the fading light, she stumbled down Connecticut Avenue. Cars rushed by; people went around. Tibby felt like she’d been sucked into a wormhole of heightened experience and then spat back out into the regular world. The world was regular, but she wasn’t regular anymore.
The wormhole happened to be pretty messy. Back at the hospital she’d washed her hands and face and shed her stained gown. She’d taken off the Pants and made away with just the pair of scrub pants on her legs. She hoped she wouldn’t get arrested for it. Still, she felt sticky. She didn’t want to think about that too much.
She needed to find Brian. She didn’t want to get comfortable with the ground yet.
She knew he’d be at home. At her home. She pointed herself in the right direction.
A block from her house she saw him walking toward her. She didn’t question that. It was one of those days.
They didn’t run into each other’s arms or anything.